


Choices

by PhantasmaDormi



Series: Robin is not okay (and that's alright) [1]
Category: Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: Angst, Death, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Introspection, Minor Character Death, POV Second Person, Possible Trauma, Robin sees all possibilities on the battlefield, Robin thinks about the choices they can make, Time Shenanigans, Trauma, feeling disconnected
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-11
Updated: 2019-12-11
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:14:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21759643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PhantasmaDormi/pseuds/PhantasmaDormi
Summary: Your name is Robin. Your choices mean a lot of things. A lot hinges on that.
Series: Robin is not okay (and that's alright) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1572874
Comments: 2
Kudos: 12





	Choices

**Author's Note:**

> Random idea that popped into my head and I was like "sure I'll bite" and wrote this lil piece.

Your name is Robin. You are a tactician.

You see the world just a little differently from everyone else. It’s divided into movements, action for action. This is what makes you a strong contender on the battlefield.

Sometimes, you wished you didn’t hold such a vision. You see, at times, what feels like every solution, and choice, and potential for every action, for every situation you could fall into.

Your friends become pieces. They move around, fight your foes, win. Sometimes, they lose.

It’s your job to make sure they don’t lose.

Because each time you plan the next attack your mind whirls with what could happen. Move him here, he gets attacked twice. Will he survive? Move her here. She gets to strike down an enemy, but at the cost of being attacked. Will she live? 

You see each choice unfold before your eyes, friend and foe alike falling dead to the ground. You can’t hold on to any of these. Few paths will take you to victory, fewer still with everyone intact.

You pretend that the bad choices don’t happen. That you didn’t send out someone on a gamble, throwing their fate to luck because having them push the line there was the only way to free yourself of the tight spot you’d been backed into.

Sometimes, you watch them die. Luck rolled the die and it hit hard. Or they missed by a hair. And they get stabbed, or shot, or sliced in two. They fall to the ground, eyes wide, face frozen. You want to scream, want to puke, but as your allies yell in grief and fury time slows. You will them back to life, you want them to have succeeded, your grief manifests into a staccato of fading breaths.

You blink.

And you’re back to before you made that choice. You wonder if you imagined it. If the reason that you can’t remember anything isn’t amnesia but rather the fact that your head is constantly filled with so many choices and possibilities. Deaths, victories, failures, life. Maybe you can’t remember anything because your head tossed out every memory of every battle you could have had and accidentally tossed whatever you used to be out too.

Maybe.

So you try again, same tactic, same fight. Because you want to see. Is that what will happen? Death, lungs punctured with a wheeze. Is that what will happen?

It doesn’t. Fate rolled its eyes and cast its die. He lives, he gets healed. He fights on.

But your mind churns and churns, spitting out idea and problem, solution and consequence. You win the battle, but maybe you also lost? It’s hard to tell. You remember dying. You remember fire erupting from your fingertips and scorching someone alive.

They hail your strategies as the winner of the battle, the to-be-winner of the war. You smile. You don’t feel like a winner. You feel like there is something lurking in the back of your mind. A distant apathy towards seeing your friends die. A backend feeling of horror at seeing them die. Something. Like the presence of every decision you could have made that would have gotten everyone killed hangs on your shoulders. Like you made every single choice to watch them die.

Your name is Robin. You are a tactician.

You make the choice on who lives and dies.

You pretend to be okay with that.


End file.
